Wednesday, May 13, 2020

MORE TO COME... MUCH MORE TO COME....

"I have been told what I can and cannot say in class; what I can and cannot say when I give interviews to the press; and what I can and cannot say when I send emails to my students. I have had my faculty web site shut down, my research funding cancelled, and my pay docked for publishing views on film education that university administrators disagreed with. I have been screamed at, called names, and been the subject of almost a decade of vicious personal attacks when I have expressed opinions with which my program Director, Chairman, or Dean have disagreed. Welcome to Boston University!" Professor Ray Carney 


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“Several years after my faculty web site was abolished for publishing things BU administrators disagreed with, and a short time after I had been told by my Dean what I was and was not allowed to say in my classes or to write my students in emails, my department Chairman wrote me a memo telling me I was not to talk about the BU situation with reporters or other members of the media when I gave interviews. I almost laughed out loud when I read it. Think about what he was doing. He was writing me a memo censoring my mention of the censorship policy—even as he and other BU administrators categorically denied that there was a censorship policy. My discussion of the censorship I had experienced was being censored! Things had gone completely through the looking glass. I had become a character in Alice in Wonderland.” Professor Ray Carney


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The students are the real losers. They are being cheated by the bullying, monitoring, and muzzling of faculty expression at BU, and by corruption in the faculty evaluation, promotion, and pay system, and by codes of "pedagogical correctness" that control both what and how teachers are allowed to teach. They are being defrauded when principled and courageous faculty leave or are forced out, and they end up with faculty who accept monitoring and control of what they say, write, and teach in the classroom, and who are rewarded for gaming the teaching, evaluation, promotion, and pay systems.” Professor Ray Carney 
 

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Academic freedom is the indispensable quality of institutions of higher education. As the American Association of University Professors core policy statement argues, "institutions of higher education are conducted for the common good and not to further the interest of either the individual teacher or the institution as a whole. The common good depends upon the free search for truth and its free exposition."The American Association of University Professors
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“Our Nation is deeply committed to safeguarding academic freedom, which is of transcendent value to all of us and not merely to the teachers concerned. That freedom is therefore a special concern of the First Amendment, which does not tolerate laws that cast a pall of orthodoxy over the classroom.”The U.S. Supreme Court in Keyishian v. Board of Regents, 385 U.S. 589 (1967)

Please click on the menu items to the right to read an account of Ray Carney’s experiences at Boston University. The posting order is the recommended reading order--beginning with the March 2013 postings.


MORE TO COME! MUCH MORE TO COME!

Don't touch that dial! Stay tuned......




Photo of Ray Carney taken at the premiere screening of the first version of Shadows at the Rotterdam Film Festival by Anke Teunissen. Copyrighted. May not be used without permission.


Please note: Since Boston University administrators claim the right to read faculty and student emails sent through the university system (and since the Dean of the College of Communication has, in fact, read, commented on, and distributed copies of personal emails Ray Carney has written and received), Ray Carney highly recommends that anyone writing him who desires confidentiality not use the B.U. email system. He may be reached at his gmail.com account via the name: raycarney1.